When I first heard of William F. Buckley some 20 years ago, I didn’t like him.
It was Christmas. I wanted rollerblades. I got a William F. Buckley Word a Day calendar.
Since then, my esteem for this man with a great vocabulary and a great vision has grown. He accomplished so much, and for the purposes of this site, we should honour him for holding the life line in our culture. Not merely for holding it, but for ardently and eloquently defending it.
Read more about his life, here.
A Lifesite editorial here comments on the recent Hastings Center Report on infant euthanasia in the Netherlands. This point struck me as interesting:
What [pro-lifers] seem to have failed to recognize, therefore, at least with the necessary clarity, is that the humanity or inhumanity of the fetus is often no longer the issue – at least, not within the elite spheres of the pro-death movement…
Agreed. I once interviewed a woman working in an abortion clinic. Our conversation became more heated (not good) and I spluttered something along these lines of “Don’t you know what the fetus is?” She in turn rolled her eyes at me and said “Of course. You think I don’t know? You think women don’t know?”
So it was then that I realized there are two types of pro-choice people: Those who naively believe the fetus is not a person until a certain magical moment in gestation and those who know the fetus is human from day one but don’t care. (They also get touchy on the terms “person” versus “human” but that’s the substance of a different post. The fetus is human because it’s not animal or mineral, but a person? That’s a whole different ballgame. )
Joyce Arthur of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada has a letter in the Citizen today. She states there is a conflict between Bill C-484 (unborn victims of violence) and existing laws. There isn’t-because the only law governing the fetus today, and after this bill too, is a woman’s choice.
A woman can do what she chooses with her unborn child.
Now what Arthur is getting at is a longstanding hypocrisy: When an unborn child is wanted, he or she gets medical treatment, even in the womb. And when unwanted, he or she can be killed.
With this bill, when a wanted unborn child dies, the criminal can be charged accordingly.
The decision still hinges on a woman’s choice.
This hypocrisy has existed for some time, and this bill rests on that hypocrisy.
In these cases of violence against pregnant women, they wanted their babies. They chose to keep them. Therefore, honouring their memory, as per their family’s requests, many of whom are backing the bill, means charging the criminal for two murders.
Joyce Arthur, with her complaint, is suggesting that in these cases of violence against a woman and her child, that woman’s choice doesn’t count.
Why? Because Joyce Arthur fears, more than usual, that the eternal hypocrisy of our system will be exposed. (This system, which cares for infants on one floor of a hospital and aborts them on another.)
But either this is a game of choice, or it’s not.
Joyce has two choices then: To support women’s choices, or not.
Arbitrary? Yes. But groups like hers made the rules. Now they ought to play by them.
…Canada! For “scariest country on the planet,” in the Gender Politics category.
I do wonder, however, why Canada would be worse than the UK, or the States. Seems to me women’s studies departments and gender politics thrive elsewhere too.
But no matter, the honour, for today, is all ours.
PWPL is proud to report that our very own Brigitte Pellerin is swish. Or at very least, she’s attending a swishy event. She’s on the jury that nominates the winner of the prestigious Shaughnessy Cohen Award for Political Writing and has both a ticket and a dress for this hot, sold out event. No karate kimono tonight.
This revelation spells the end of her self-deprecating “I’m an old goat” series of jokes. Clearly, you are cool and I think the rest of the old goats here would appreciate it if you just came clean.
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Brigitte is: Thinking about a comeback… I’m sure there’s one somewhere… How about I like being an old goat? Does that work?
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Andrea adds: As in, you are an old goat in swishy clothing? Works for me.
Vicki Saporta and the National Abortion Federation will not support Bill C-484. That’s the unborn victims of violence bill before Parliament right now. How could they? They point out in the release that the bill’s sponsor, Ken Epp is a known public enemy, er sorry, “a known opponent of legal abortion.” For the National Abortion Federation, it’s all sweetness and decency, hands across the water and teaching the world to sing: Until a pro-lifer enters the room.
Their reasoning? The bill will apparently conflict with “well-established Canadian laws.”
NAF fully supports a woman’s right to choose to carry a pregnancy to term. Because this bill does nothing to protect women and because its possible consequences include casting doubt over well-established Canadian law, NAF opposes C-484.
That’s funny, because Parliament deemed the bill votable. And then there’s the fact that Canada has no abortion law. So where might the conflict be?
On the plus side, NAF will not be mandating death–they felt it necessary to state their support for a woman’s right to keep her baby in the same press release.
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Brigitte adds: I always like to ask people why they say the things they say. Here I would like to know why the NAF insists that they “fully supports a woman’s right to choose to carry a pregnancy to term.” I’m glad they do, and I don’t mean to question their motives (well, you know, not unduly), but I wonder why they felt the need to add this sentence. It’s like this other bit I noticed a while back, from Carolyn Egan, a spokeswoman for the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, who suggested that:
… a more appropriate way of dealing with such a serious crime is for the courts to impose a stiffer sentence for the perpetrator when the victim is pregnant.
Why do people who insist the fetus has no rights because it is not a person also insist that a crime against a woman who is carrying one of those non-person things in her body should be punished more severely than a crime against a woman who’s not carrying a non-person fetus thing in her body?
Read about your right to accurate sex selection–for purposes of abortion– here.
…Eventually, we’ll establish rules to ensure the safety and efficacy of fetal sex tests. At that point, we’ll declare them adequately regulated. That’s how a taboo begins to die…
Sex selection abortion–if only we could make it safer, more reliable. Avoid the pain and distress of a false gender test result. Just imagine what those couples must suffer.
David Cameron, Conservative opposition leader in the UK will support a lower limit on abortion. That limit currently stands at 24 weeks.
Gordon Brown, British Prime Minister, won’t, “on the basis of medical advice.”
Though it’s admirable that Cameron will support a lower limit, this is the kind of debate I’d rather not have. Abortion is not typically at any number of weeks about women’s health, but rather about our cultural mentality. If it were truly about women’s health, we’d encourage a woman’s ability to support what her body does naturally. 24 weeks, 20 weeks, 14 weeks, eight weeks, four weeks or two… always a person, and largely a choice made for distinctly non-medical reasons.
My grandson was murdered, says Mary Talbot in today’s Ottawa Citizen.
Joyce Arthur of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada offers up a “there, there, Mary.”
While we deeply sympathize with them and understand their wish, it must be recognized that victims of violence are not those who should be making decisions about justice in a democratic society. Appropriate laws and penalties must be determined by impartial parties who do not allow emotion or personal bias to colour their decisions…
I think it’s fair to say this: Arthur says she sympathizes with Talbot, and somewhere, somehow, that may be true. But Arthur is also the author of Fetus Focus Fallacy and where Talbot knows she had a grandson, Arthur thinks she had a fetus, and furthermore, that we ought not to focus on that.
As for “impartial parties informing the laws,” I’ll assume that means we’ll be rescinding the Morgentaler decision. And that he, and all pro-abortion groups, will be giving up their fight in New Brunswick in short order.
The bottom line: Arthur sees only one victim here and can’t really sympathise with Mary Talbot at all, as a result. And that would be due to her own lack of impartiality.
Et voilà. Better than watching the Oscars.
